With its “very Scandinavian” charm, Oslo is a very pleasant city to visit for those who like this kind of destination. Personally, however, I was particularly interested in its museums.
After Stockholm, Copenhagen and Gothenburg, Oslo was the major Scandinavian city missing from my list. And strangely enough, this is the first one I’ve written a travel diary about, so I’ll have to take the time to go back and visit the first three at length.
This trip to Vietnam was an opportunity to fill this gap, as I had found an excellent fare on Turkish Airlines from the Norwegian capital. While on the outward journey I had been content to spend the night at the airport for reasons of convenience, on my return I had planned to spend the weekend there.
Bad luck, as on my first visit a bright sun was shining in a blue sky, it was in the greyness that I returned. Suffice it to say that after two weeks under the Asian sun, it’s a blow to morale and not very motivating. But I still forced myself to do the essentials, without going into as much depth as I would have done in other circumstances.
You’ll find a summary of articles about this trip to Vietnam at the bottom of the page.
Table of Contents
- Oslo Opera House
- The Munch Museum
- The National Museum of Oslo (Nasjonalmuseet)
- Oslo Cathedral
- The Town Hall
- The Royal Palace of Oslo
- The city
- Did you know?
- Bottom line
- The articles about this trip to Vietnam
Oslo Opera House
Inaugurated in 2008, it’s located on the port, to the east of the city center, in a more modern area, a sort of eco-responsible district.
It’s one of the largest monuments ever built in Norway.
Its architecture makes it easily recognizable.
It’s surrounded by a wide, sloping esplanade that invites you to take a stroll and, from above, offers a beautiful view of the port and the city.
Note the superb winter sunshine in mid-September.
It’s not obvious at first glance, but it’s very sloping.
It’s easy to see from the back, from the Munch Museum just behind.
The esplanade and terrace should be very pleasant in summer.
Personally, I think the architecture is superb and very successful. Not as impressive as the Sydney Opera House, but beautiful nonetheless.
Let’s take a look inside, at the 1,350-capacity hall.
The lobby is bright and airy.
Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’m going to go: no English-language tours were available during my stay, and I didn’t see much point in doing it in German or Norwegian.
The Munch Museum
It’s undoubtedly the city’s best-known museum, and for many visitors it’s enough to justify a visit to Oslo. And that’s why I put Oslo on my list of cities to discover first.
Following Edvard Munch’s death, the city of Oslo inherited all the works still in the artist’s possession. The first museum opened in 1963, housing 1,200 paintings, 3,000 drawings and 18,000 engravings.
The current, more modern museum, which replaces it, was inaugurated in 2021 and covers an area of 26,300 m2. It’s located just behind the opera house.
It includes 26,724 works by Munch: almost 1,200 paintings, 7,050 drawings and sketches, 18,322 graphics.
The rooms are organized according to themes: Alone, Dying, The Cry, Love, Gender, Outdoors, Nude, Others, Self, In Motion, Surface and Variations.
The section dedicated to his famous painting ” The Scream ” includes a copy of the latter, a lithograph and a pastel on cardboard.
It is not, however, the original which is in the National Museum in Oslo, and which we’ll talk about later. This is just one of the variations painted by the artist in later years.
During my visit, there was a temporary exhibition of the artist Alice Neel, an American figurative painter, feminist and libertarian.
With light colors, expressive brushstrokes and an often ruthless psychological vision, his paintings depicted people from all classes and backgrounds.
A very fine exhibition by a committed artist whom I discovered on this occasion.
The National Museum of Oslo (Nasjonalmuseet)
Its real name is the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. It is the result of the merger of five former museums and opened in 2022.
In this respect, I’m truly impressed by the resources committed by a city the size of Oslo, which in the space of twenty years has built three highly ambitious buildings: the Opera House, the Munch Museum and the National Museum (the last two were built simultaneously). On the scale of a city of this size, this is quite simply considerable.
A visit to the pre-20th-century collections will be an opportunity to discover local artists.
I’ll also find some more familiar artists.
There’s a room dedicated to Munch where you’ll find the original “The scream”.
As is often the case, I was less impressed by the contemporary art and ancient art sections.
The museum also boasts a large terrace with a delightful view.
Oslo Cathedral
A Lutheran church inaugurated in 1697, it is used for numerous public events.
Very, very frugal, which makes sense given the cult involved.
Around it, nineteenth-century arcades house stalls.
The Town Hall
It’s a building of Expressionist architecture, whose construction began in 1931 but was not completed and inaugurated until 1950 due to the war.
This is where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year.
The Royal Palace of Oslo
Built in the first half of the 19th century for the King of Sweden and Norway, it is the official residence of the King of Norway.
It is built on a hill overlooking the town.
It can be visited from mid-June to the end of August…I wasn’t there at the right time.
The city
As in most large Scandinavian cities, Oslo’s city center is made up of pretty, colorful stone buildings to offset the frequent greyness of the weather.
Very pretty and pleasant, but I have to admit that Copenhagen, Gothenburg and, to a lesser extent, Stockholm are still my favorites.
I found Oslo less lively than the three cities mentioned above, but perhaps this was due to my own context, for a stay at the end of a long trip and with a shock of climate and light. Having said that, Oslo is a small capital, with just over 600,000 inhabitants, which is like Gothenburg, Sweden’s 2nd largest city, but with a more favorable climate and, in my opinion, a more lively and festive DNA.
Did you know?
What do Oslo and Chicago have in common? No, these are not winters that invite you not to go outside. Or not only.
Like Chicago, Oslo was destroyed by fire in 1624 and rebuilt on the other side of the Bjørvika cove (where the Opera House now stands). At the time, it was named Christiania in honor of King Christian, who decided to rebuild the city before reverting to its original name in 1925.
Bottom line
I really don’t regret this short stay: Oslo is a very interesting city from a cultural point of view, with a pleasant atmosphere and environment.
On a personal level, I feel more at home in Copenhagen, Goteborg or Stockholm. But you have to put this opinion into perspective: spending two days in Oslo at the end of a two-week trip, and arriving in grey and cool conditions when I was in the warmth and sunshine, necessarily has an impact on perception. I would certainly have felt differently if Oslo had been my only destination and at a different time.
Too bad for me, the sunshine I had during my brief stopover at the airport on the way out came back…on the day of my departure.
A must do again.
Having said that, I’d like to make a general point. From other countries, especially France, I sense a certain skepticism, even incredulity, when I talk about the cultural and artistic interest of this type of destination. In the collective imagination, they may be nice destinations, with nature and lakes…and that’s all. This is a totally unfounded preconception.
I was blown away by the number of museums in Copenhagen and, above all, the quality and richness of their collections. Stockholm offers some very interesting things too, and I was even more than pleasantly surprised by the Gothenburg Museum of Fine Arts. Then there’s Oslo, where the Munch Museum alone is worth the trip.
Niche destinations that are too little known by the general public and deserve much more attention.
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